Anurag Dikshit: Early Member of PartyPoker

Anurag Dikshit (pronounced dik-sit) is an Indian billionaire who played
an instrumental role in developing Party Poker and turning it
into one of the first mega poker sites in the world. There were
plenty of poker sites before Party Gaming came along, but Party
Poker was the first to take online poker
mainstream.

Anurag attended college in India where he majored in computer
science and engineering. He moved to the United States after
earning his degree and worked at CMC, Websci, and AT&T. In 1999,
the 26-year old was approached by Party Gaming founder Ruth
Parasol and was asked to develop the software for her brand new
poker site.

Although he didn't know it at the time, this new job set him
on the path to becoming a billionaire. Anurag accepted the
offer, took an ownership stake in the budding poker site and got
to work. In 2000, he asked his friend Vikrant Bhargava to join
him. Vikrant would also go on to earn a fortune with the
company.

Party Poker officially launched in 2001, and it was obvious
fairly early on that this was a special poker site. The software
developed by Anurag and his team was light-years ahead of what
was offered by any other poker site at the time. Back in the
late 90s and early 2000s, poker software was cheesy, slow, and
sluggish.

Party Poker's software was fast, responsive, and easy on the
eyes. Instead of trying to recreate brick-and-mortar poker
rooms, Party Poker went with a simpler design that made it
easier for players to see their cards and manage their wagers.

At the same time, Party Poker took a lighthearted approach to
poker. In those days, online poker appealed to a more serious
demographic. You had to really want to play online poker to find
out about these sites, play for real money, and deal with the
sub-par software that was the industry standard.

Party Poker went on a massive advertising campaign and grew
quickly. The ads brought players to Party Poker and Anurag's
software kept them around. The site was easy to use and
responsive to button clicks. This made it a newbie-friendly
poker site, which also appealed to the sharks who fed off of new
players.

Party Poker eventually became the largest poker site in the
world. It accepted players from around the world, including the
relatively untapped US market. The fact that Party Poker
accepted customers from the United States would later cause big
problems for Party Poker, but it made Anurag and his cohorts
very rich.

Anurag sold off a large portion of his shares in Party Gaming
during the company's London IPO in 2005. In 2006, he stepped
down as a director and took over as head of the company's
research and projects division. He left Party Gaming for good in
2006 but retained enough shares to still own 28% of the company.

It was also in 2006 that the United States passed the UIGEA
(Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) and started
targeting online poker sites. Party Poker and its founders were
named in the indictments that followed. Anurag Dikshit answered
the charges, came to the United States, and paid a $300 million
fine. He served no prison time.

The details of Anurag's decision to return to the United
States are unclear, but it seems to have been a long-term
strategy on Party's part to get back into the DOJ's good graces
in anticipation of legal online poker in the US. In any case, it
seems to have been a smart move. When New Jersey legalized
online poker within state borders, Party Poker (now known as "bwin.party")
was authorized to team up with the Borgata to open a fully legal
poker site.

He sold off the rest of his shares in 2010 and is now
completely out of the online poker game. There's not a whole lot
of information out there about his personal life, but he is
married and has at least one child.

Anurag and his wife Dr. Soma Pujari are big into charity.
They set up the Kusuma Trust in 2008 and have donated hundreds
of millions of British pounds to charity via the trust. One of
the organization's primary missions is to provide education and
training to the most disadvantaged people in the world.